The Radioactive Boy Scout

Kevin Coolidge

The first haircut, the first kiss, the first time I got just the right amount of potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal. All are important rites of passage, but none are quite as memorable as winning my first pinewood derby. The pinewood derby is a racing event for Cub Scouts in the Boy Scouts of America.

We were given a kit containing a block of pine, four plastic wheels, and four nails. The finished car can’t weigh more than five ounces. The cars are powered by gravity so getting the car as close to the five ounces is pretty critical. My first try was a sky blue block that resembled a shoebox, but you are never too young to start applying scientific principles.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s the law, but there was no rule that said my red rocket beauty couldn’t have a little something extra in those chrome exhaust ports. I made pack history by being the first scout to take first, second, and third place. Unfortunately, the judge ruled that my car had to cross the finish line in one piece to qualify. Next year, I decided to go nuclear…

Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn too was fascinated by science. While he was working on his Atomic Energy badge* for the Boy Scouts, he learned that some of the requirements were making a simple Geiger counter, learning about the pioneers of atomic energy—such as Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi – and building a model of a reactor, showing the various parts. He also needed to be able to explain how a reactor could be used to change nuclear into electrical energy or make things radioactive.

David learned how all radioactive elements and isotopes have a half-life, a term that refers to the amount of time required for the intensity of their radiation to decay by half. He also continued his research on other nuclear scientists, and read everything he could find about the Marie and Pierre Curie. Much of their hard work and genius got results even though their methods are crude by today’s standards.

David pored over his nuclear research whenever he had a chance. He plunged into a new project: building a working nuclear reactor in his backyard. The rickety shed that served as his laboratory offered little protection from the elements.

Following blueprints from outdated physics textbooks, and information he solicited from industry experts by posing as a physics teacher. David was able to cobble together a crude device that emitted toxic levels of radiation.

His unsupervised and unknown project sparked an environmental emergency that brought a team of men in white, ventilated suits to the suburbs of Detroit on a warm summer afternoon on June 26, 1995. David didn’t come close to building a working reactor, though he succeeded in penetrating with neutrons the atoms of his gathered thorium-232**, but was not able to turn it into fissionable uranium.


The wood planks that were his shed, and everything found inside, however, was sealed in thirty-nine barrels marked with the radioactive symbol and was buried in a sealed repository designed to last for thousands of years in the middle of the Great Salt Lake Desert in Utah.

David’s experiment that put over forty thousand people at risk first appeared in Harper’s Magazine. Investigative reporter Ken Silverstein conducted extensive interviews with David, teachers, parents, police reports and Environmental Protection Agency reports, which grew into the book, The Radioactive Boy Scout…

*The Atomic Energy Badge has since been replaced with the Nuclear Science merit badge.
**Obtained by collecting hundreds of thorium-dioxide coated mantles from gas lanterns and then isolating it into a pure form by using lithium from batteries.

Cold glass of milk with your yellow cake? Or a scoop of ice cream on your hot apple pi? Drop me an email at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com and let me know. Miss a past column? Dig deep and explore at frommyshelf.blogspot.com and discover for yourself. Cats are really bad at science, but can be great storytellers. You can read about Hobo’s story in “Hobo Finds A Home” a story about a kitten that turned lead into gold…